Jason Fung > Quotes

“But diet and exercise are not fifty-fifty partners like macaroni and cheese. Diet is Batman and exercise is Robin. Diet does 95 per cent of the work and deserves all the attention; so, logically, it would be sensible to focus on diet. Exercise is still healthy and important—just not equally important. It has many benefits, but weight loss is not among them. Exercise is like brushing your teeth. It is good for you and should be done every day. Just don’t expect to lose weight.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code

“The basics of good nutrition can be summarized in these simple rules. Eat whole, unprocessed foods. Avoid sugar. Avoid refined grains. Eat a diet high in natural fats. Balance feeding with fasting. !”
― Jason Fung, The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting

“We are wired for feast and famine, not feast, feast, feast.”
― Jason Fung, The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting

“Hunger is a state of mind, not a state of stomach.”
― Jason Fung, The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting

“Once we understand that obesity is a hormonal imbalance, we can begin to treat it. If we believe that excess calories cause obesity, then the treatment is to reduce calories. But this method has been a complete failure. However, if too much insulin causes obesity, then it becomes clear we need to lower insulin levels.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code

“This is the ancient secret. This is the cycle of life. Fasting follows feasting. Feasting follows fasting. Diets must be intermittent, not steady. Food is a celebration of life. Every single culture in the world celebrates with large feasts. That’s normal, and it’s good. However, religion has always reminded us that we must balance our feasting with periods of fasting—“atonement,” “repentance” or “cleansing.” These ideas are ancient and time-tested. Should you eat lots of food on your birthday? Absolutely. Should you eat lots of food at a wedding? Absolutely. These are times to celebrate and indulge. But there is also a time to fast. We cannot change this cycle of life. We cannot feast all the time. We cannot fast all the time. It won’t work. It doesn’t work.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“The price of fasting is zero.”
― Jason Fung, The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting

“The healthy snack is one of the greatest weight-loss deceptions. The myth that ‘grazing is healthy’ has attained legendary status. If we were meant to ‘graze,’ we would be cows. Grazing is the direct opposite of virtually all food traditions. Even as recently as the 1960s, most people still ate just three meals per day. Constant stimulation of insulin eventually leads to insulin resistance. (For”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code

“Coffee, even the decaffeinated version, appears to protect against type 2 diabetes. In a 2009 review, each additional daily cup of coffee lowered the risk of diabetes by 7 percent, even up to six cups per day.23”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“THE LAST PIECE OF THE PUZZLE THERE ARE FIVE basic steps in weight loss: Reduce your consumption of added sugars. Reduced your consumption of refined grains. Moderate your protein intake. Increase your consumption of natural fats. Increase your consumption of fiber and vinegar.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“A recent study suggests that 75 per cent of the weight-loss response in obesity is predicted by insulin levels. Not willpower. Not caloric intake. Not peer support or peer pressure. Not exercise. Just insulin.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors. —Mark Twain”
― Jason Fung, The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting

“fasting is the simplest and surest method to force your body to burn sugar.”
― Jason Fung, The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally

“Interestingly, I’ve seen the highest success rates with husbands and wives who try fasting together: the mutual support is a big help and makes fasting far easier.”
― Jason Fung, The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting

“Diet is Batman and exercise is Robin. Diet does 95 percent of the work and deserves all the attention; so, logically, it would be sensible to focus on diet. Exercise is still healthy and important—just not equally important. It has many benefits, but weight loss is not among them.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“Try to physically remove yourself from all food stimuli during a fast. Cooking a meal or even just seeing and smelling food while fasting is almost unbearably difficult. This is not simply a matter of weak willpower. Our cephalic phase responses are fully activated, and to feel those responses without actually eating is like trying to stop a piranha feeding frenzy. This, of course, is the same reason you should not shop for food when hungry, or keep snacks in the pantry.”
― Jason Fung, The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting

“The government is subsidizing, with our own tax dollars, the very foods that are making us obese. Obesity is effectively the result of government policy.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“OBESITY IS NOT caused by an excess of calories, but instead by a body set weight that is too high because of a hormonal imbalance in the body.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“Fasting, by taking a completely different approach, is much easier to understand. It is so simple that it can be explained in two sentences: Eat nothing. Drink water, tea, coffee, or bone broth. That’s it.”
― Jason Fung, The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting

“In a modern twist to the classic overeating experiments, Feltham decided that he would eat 5794 calories per day and document his weight gain. But the diet he chose was not a random 5794 calories. He followed a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet of natural foods for twenty-one days. Feltham believed, based on clinical experience, that refined carbohydrates, not total calories, caused weight gain. The macronutrient breakdown of his diet was 10 percent carbohydrate, 53 percent fat and 37 percent protein. Standard calorie calculations predicted a weight gain of about 16 pounds (7.3 kilograms). Actual weight gain, however, was only about 2.8 pounds (1.3 kilograms). Even more interesting, he dropped more than 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) from his waist measurement. He gained weight, but it was lean mass.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“Let’s face the truth. Low-calorie diets have been tried again and again and again. They fail every single time.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“Breakfast: the most important meal to skip?”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“THERE ARE TWO prominent findings from all the dietary studies done over the years. First: all diets work. Second: all diets fail.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“The key to the proper treatment of type 2 diabetes is to get rid of the excess sugar, not just move it around the body. The problem is both too much glucose and too much insulin.”
― Jason Fung, The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally

“The root cause of the hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetes is high insulin resistance.”
― Jason Fung, The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally

“Refined carbohydrates are easy to become addicted to and overeat precisely because there are no natural satiety hormones for refined carbs. The reason, of course, is that refined carbohydrates are not natural foods but are highly processed. Their toxicity lies in that processing.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

“Myth #3: Fasting Causes Low Blood Sugar Sometimes people worry that blood sugar will fall very low during fasting and they will become shaky and sweaty. Luckily, this does not actually happen. Blood sugar level is tightly monitored by the body, and there are multiple mechanisms to keep it in the proper range. During fasting, our body begins by breaking down glycogen (remember, that’s the glucose in short-term storage) in the liver to provide glucose. This happens every night as you sleep to keep blood sugars normal as you fast overnight. FASTING ALL-STARS AMY BERGER People who engage in fasting for religious or spiritual purposes often report feelings of extreme clear-headedness and physical and emotional well-being. Some even feel a sense of euphoria. They usually attribute this to achieving some kind of spiritual enlightenment, but the truth is much more down-to-earth and scientific than that: it’s the ketones! Ketones are a “superfood” for the brain. When the body and brain are fueled primarily by fatty acids and ketones, respectively, the “brain fog,” mood swings, and emotional instability that are caused by wild fluctuations in blood sugar become a thing of the past and clear thinking is the new normal. If you fast for longer than twenty-four to thirty-six hours, glycogen stores become depleted. The liver now can manufacture new glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis, using the glycerol that’s a by-product of the breakdown of fat. This means that we do not need to eat glucose for our blood glucose levels to remain normal. A related myth is that brain cells can only use glucose for energy. This is incorrect. Human brains, unique amongst animals, can also use ketone bodies—particles that are produced when fat is metabolized—as a fuel source. This allows us to function optimally even when food is not readily available. Ketones provide the majority of the energy we need. Consider the consequences if glucose were absolutely necessary for brain function. After twenty-four hours without food, glucose stored in our bodies in the form of glycogen is depleted. At that point, we’d become blubbering idiots as our brains shut down. In the Paleolithic era, our intellect was our only advantage against wild animals with their sharp claws, sharp fangs, and bulging muscles. Without it, humans would have become extinct long ago. When glucose is not available, the body begins to burn fat and produce ketone bodies, which are able to cross the blood-brain barrier to feed the brain cells. Up to 75 percent of the brain’s energy requirements can be met by ketones. Of course, that means that glucose still provides 25 percent of the brain’s energy requirements. So does this mean that we have to eat for our brains to function?”
― Jason Fung, The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting

“If the situation is getting worse, then the only logical explanation is that our understanding and treatment of type 2 diabetes is fundamentally flawed.”
― Jason Fung, The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally

“practical experience with hundreds of patients shows that while they’re on an intermittent fasting regimen, they most often see their hunger diminish, not increase.”
― Jason Fung, The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting

“If you want to avoid weight gain, remove all added sugars from your diet.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss